Can Odoo be used as a laboratory information management system? 

The answer is "yes" and "no" at the same time. Odoo offers many functions that can be used reasonably in a laboratory, such as managing payment tracking, accounting, or inventory. However, Odoo lacks important tools for managing samples and tests.

Wo liegen die Hindernisse und wie können sie überwunden werden?

Sending a physical addition, like samples in this case, to an order is not supported by Odoo so far. The system only knows the order. Why this link is important can be explained quite easily:

Think of blood tests, for example. In order to perform blood tests, a patient's blood sample must arrive at the laboratory with instructions for which tests are to be performed. This means that the order and the sample must be handled together and should be traceable to each other at all times.

Our TerraLab extension does this, making it possible to link orders and physical attachments.

Odoo also does not know the concept of tests as they are commonly performed in laboratories. They are performed with different devices and include additional calculations based on the tests, which are included in the result.

To prevent errors and system crashes that could occur if formulas were created with Python in Odoo, we have created a linking of Odoo and Google Sheets for these purposes. This makes creation and editing safer and easier. First, you can define the formulas just like you used to in Excel. Then, Odoo forwards the information and variables from Odoo to Google Sheets in the background and receives the result back. This works extremely well.